Various types of systems have been developed to provide electronic conferencing capabilities to individuals positioned at diverse locations. U.S. Pat. No. 5,491,743 issued to Shiio et al. is directed to a virtual conference system and terminal apparatus therefore. The conference system consists of a ring-like network capable of transmitting and receiving a digital signal and a series of user terminals connected to the network. In use, when the operator of the user terminal selects a processing menu item to perform a conference, a virtual conference room window showing the overall view of a conference room pops up on the display screen of the display of the user terminal. A conference room list window showing a list of conferences currently going on and a conference attendee window, in which animated characters representing attendance allowed to attend those conferences are arranged, are also displayed on a digital screen.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,306, issued to Nitta, refers to an animated electronic meeting place in which users or participants, are portrayed on a screen, with having poses generally corresponding to the poses sensed at each of the respective user stations. The animated electronic meeting place is 3-D in character and each of the users is illustrated as a caricature, doll, or other representation of himself and controlled by a personal control device. Camera, persona selection means, position detection sensor, gaze control, and microphone, are all inputs to the personal control device. U.S. Pat. No. 5,880,731, issued to Liles et al. is directed to the use of avatars with automatic gesturing and bounded interaction in on-line chat sessions.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,217 issued to Grayson et al. invention focuses on animating an online conference with the emphasis on conserving bandwidth by translating text to voice locally. U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,179 issued to Matsuda et al. provides a virtual space including avatars of users accessing the space and a mechanism for users to determine if online chat is possible with other users of the space. Assuming a positive result, the user may then initiate a chat session with one or more users.
While other variations exist, the above-described designs for electronic conferencing systems are typical of those encountered in the prior art. It is an objective of the present invention to provide for a virtual, persistent meeting having a unique identifying name and a unique identifying topic. It is a further objective to provide for a virtual persistent meeting space to be used for the meeting by a set of participants authorized by a coordinator. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide for the generation and transmission of various classes of messages related to the meeting. It is yet a further objective to provide a means for recordings the messages and making them available to authorized meeting participants on a persistent basis. It is still a further objective of the invention to provide a series of tools, documents, references, resources and communication capabilities uniquely linked to the meeting and its authorized participants.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.